I’m always fascinated with the day-after fallout of the Super Bowl adfest. There are plenty of people doing their Monday morning armchair quarterbacking thing, lamenting how terrible the commercials were and how much they continue to suck year after year. It’s at this point I try to take my branding hat off and recognize something I think is rather important. The commercials were not made for us. They were made for the 95% of everyone else who wants to be entertained. They were made for people like my dad who could give two craps if there was an overabundance of slapstick violence and dudes trying to pick up chicks (Love you, Dad!). The only metric here is whether the ads were amusing and some of them were very amusing and entertaining, indeed.

Time for all of us who claim to be brand and online cognoscenti to get off our high horse and recognize that Super Bowl ads are not Shakespeare and they don’t need to be earth-shatteringly original. These commercials are made to appeal to a broad population and that population sits right in the middle of America. Like it or not. They like watching Betty White and Abe Vigoda get creamed in a football game, they like dudes wearing Doritos and attacking people, (and I guess they must like guys wandering the African savanna in their underwear).

Of course, feel free to not take my word for it. I grew up on Benny Hill and The Three Stooges so dumb, risque, slapstick humor is part of my cultural heritage.

Steve Roesler applied the tag to me last week for a book reading meme. I’m kind of a sucker for anything book related so here she goes… 

The object of this meme’s game is to share what I’m currently reading and sentences 6-8 of page 123 of that book. I’m actually reading three books right now, two of them contributing to my professional learning: Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting and Pamela Skilling’s soon-to-be-released Escape from Corporate America. Here’s the page 123 snippet from Pamela’s work:

However, it is the immediate manager you work with every day who makes the biggest impact on your job satisfaction. Great companies cultivate great managers. They also give them the tools and the autonomy to lead their teams effectively.

What else is currently in the queue? Here’s my bookpile in the order I plan to read:

The Halo Effect – Phil Rosenzweig
Weird Ideas That Work – Robert Sutton
Get Back in the Box – Douglas Rushkoff
Excellence by Design – Turid H Horgan, Michael L Joroff, William L Porter, & Donald A Schon
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith

Dang…that’s a bit of a load and I’m not at all sure that I’ll get through all of these books by the end of the summer. The problem for me is that I’m the king tortoise of reading…I read reeeeaaaal slllllooooow. And I’m also starting my Master’s degree in Business Anthropology in July so there are no guarantees. Honestly, I imagine there will be course prescribed reading that will trump my bookshelf selections. 

So, who’s next? I’m curious to see what kind of book reading projects on are on the minds of…

Jenny Ward
Pamela Skillings
Judi Sohn
Jason Alba
Frank Martin

I love Guy Kawasaki, but today he broke my heart. A couple of weeks ago, I pitched him the idea of a careers site at his new venture, alltop.com (yeah, yeah…I’m sure others pitched him as well but I’m feeling particularly self-centered today). I even made it easy by showcasing the PageFlake I built called Work Redesigned. So today I go to alltop.com and find a new site called career.alltop.com. I’m thinking, “Yippee!, my blog is surely there because me and Guy are tight like peanut butter and jello!”

Except, no Alchemy of Soulful Work (though it is a pretty good list…and I am happy to see many of my friends there like Rosa, Phil, and David). So, do me a favor and let Guy and the others at Nononina know that Alchemy should be there to inspire others who may not know about this blog and my work. You can email them at info@alltop.com.

Thanks a bunch!

Of course, this sort of assumes that I’m a good boy…hmmm…sometimes, but not always.

I just received my SantaThing present of books. Ahhh…there’s no greater gift than the written word (unless it’s Resident Evil 4 for the Wii which my loving, lovely wife gave me as an early Christmas present). SantaThing, the brainchild of the folks from LibraryThing, gives LibraryThing members a chance to play Secret Santa to other members.

It was a way cool to get matched to someone new and choose a couple of books for them. And LibraryThing is natually set up to facilitate this since everyone’s library, book reviews, and wishlists are visible to all. For instance, my SantaThing saw that I wanted to read Charlemagne by Derek Wilson. My SantaThing also sent me a surprise – The Histories by Herodotus. I somehow made it through my formative education without reading any Greek histories or other classical works so this is going to be a delightful diversion over the holidays.

If anyone’s interested in connecting to me through LibraryThing, do a search for workplay. Or leave a comment below and we can start a dialogue here or through email. Happy reading!

So, you’ve never had a chance to see Office Space. You really want to, but can’t seem to fit it into your busy schedule of completing TPS reports, coming into work on Saturday, and burning the office down. Well, friends, today’s your lucky day. The good folks at Angry Alien Productions have produced a 30 second version of Office Space. And the best part? It’s enacted by bunnies.

Office Space in Bun-O-Vision
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED! Contains bunnies in adult situations, bunnies cursing, bunnies giving the finger, and so on.

With the current writer’s strike, this may be the only entertainment we’ll find for a while so enjoy it while you can. And if you crave more bunny action, might I also recommend:

Brokeback Mountain

Caddyshack

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Or it could just be that I’m easily enamored by the latest new cool thing. I’m not sure whether this infatuation with Facebook will go the long haul, but it’s already giving me some clues that I might just be liking it for a while to come. Why?

Reason #1: Because I’ve actually found some old high school friends who I haven’t seen or talked to in ages. It’s a treat to find out how they’re doing and share their life’s journey. There’s practically no way I would have been able to find them and catch up without FB, particularly since I’m 1500 miles from my former hometown.

Reason #2: A lot of my other social networking apps work with it…namely, Shelfari, Twitter, and Delicious. It’s neat to get all of my online hangouts merged into one place where my buds can see them, too. Heck, there are even some new ones like Where I’ve Been and iLike.

Reason #3: It beats the pants off of LinkedIn as a way to build professional contacts. As so many others have noted, LinkedIn is static and boring in the way a one-trick pony is. With Facebook, I have a much greater opportunity to build both personal and professional relationships that have actual meaning. I can related to what my contacts actually like, what they’re reading and watching, what places they’ve visited, and so on.

If you’re interested in connecting through Facebook, visit my profile page and add me to your friends.

You’ll notice that I’m subtly reintegrating The Alchemy of Soulful Work into Bailey WorkPlay. I never really meant to sweep it aside, but somewhere over the course of the past year I did. Here’s how I see this playing out…

Bailey WorkPlay right now is a project, the foundation for my work and professional identity. It is and will be the home for writings, speaking gigs, coaching, and other business ideas that I continue to hold on to. It symbolizes all the exciting possibilities for what’s next.

The Alchemy of Soulful Work is the blog. Once upon a time, someone suggested that it could also be the title of a book…hmmm. It feels right to bring it back as an ideal to re-engage our thinking of what work can be. Let’s take just a little of that magic that the ancient alchemists pursued and change our perspective of work from a mundane J-O-B to something more meaningful and soulfully satisfying.

One thing that I sometimes struggle with here at WorkPlay is the direction of my writings. I’ll be honest, I’d really like to have more traffic roll through and some of that can be accomplished by me (metaphorically) stepping out my front door and building better relationships with fellow thinkers and bloggers. I’ve allowed my more introverted side to come through online and that’s changing. I only have to look at Phil Gerbyshak for a great model of how its done. To that end, I’ve been trying to be a more frequent commenter throughout the blogosphere. And here on WorkPlay, I’ve brought back a blogroll to the front page and inserted a MyBlogLog widget. All you RSS feed readers, click here and see how it all looks.

I also fully understand that attracting more readers and commenters is a result of writing great content and therein lies a bit of my quandary. As I attempt to approach my blogging from a new angle, I find the type of content that really drives traffic is the more applied, bulleted how-to lists – the type of posts that start off “Top 10 Ways to…” These are great and I love them myself. And yet they’re somewhat limiting when it comes to pitching big picture, reality-shifting ideas for redesigning the work experience. The simple answer is to do both except that I’m far more comfortable with the latter. However, I’ll try to bring a balance to the WorkPlay content.

As always, thanks to all you readers out there. If there’s something here that excites you or pisses you off, come and join the dialogue. It’s all welcome here.

In terms of having an internet start page, I’ve been around the block a time or two. For the longest time, I used Google Personalized Page, then tried working briefly with Netvibes, only to return to Google when they recently incorporated all the widget functionality. Yet I was unsatisfied and found my eye wandering to PageFlakes. While it does have its comparative downsides, it more than makes up for it in quick performance and some pretty slick features. One thing that I really like is the easy creation and integration of Pagecasts. I’ve created a Pagecast called Work Redesigned.

If you’re not already set up with a PageFlakes page, go ahead and register…it takes just a minute. Then you’re ready to add the Work Redesigned Pagecast.

Step 1
Click on the large asterisk in the upper right corner (it’s orangy-yellow in the screenshot above). This opens the admin menu where you can select flakes, find Pagecasts, and edit your profile.

Step 2
In the left menu of admin area, select the option for Pagecasts. You’ll see some of the featured Pagecasts and you can click the button for Browse All Pagecasts.

Step 3
The easiest way to get the Work Redesigned Pagecast is to use the search feature. Type in ‘Work Redesigned’ and and then View Pagecast.

Step 4
In the top navigation bar, you should see an option called Watch this Pagecast. Click this option and it will add the Work Redesigned tab to your own PageFlakes page.

You’re finished. Now you can get your daily fill of some of the best thinking on how we can improve the work experience for ourselves and others.

Contents of Version 1 include:
Brazen Careerist
Career Hub
The Chief Happiness Officer
CareerJournal.com
Managing with Aloha Coaching
Interactions – Creative Strategies for Business
The Future of Work
Water Cooler Wisdom
The Occupational Adventure
The Servant Leadership Blog
Creative Careers Unleashed
Oh, and of course it includes WorkPlay

Yesterday, I was the beneficiary of some StumbleUpon sharing goodness (thanks, uriel1998 in Dayton, OH). Yet, it occurred to me that when I transitioned to the new design I didn’t include an easy way to share WorkPlay across the major social media spots. You’ll now see a ‘Share This’ icon in the info portion of each post.

Some other WorkPlay site news…
I added a ratings function that allows readers to rate each post on a 1 to 5 star scale.

I’m in the process of opening up a blogroll/reads listing again. It’s been one of those sorely missing parts of the site and an important way of sharing some linklove.

Happy Thursday…more to come.